The Door That Should Not Be

Memory is a fucked up thing, don’t ya think? It changes and grows like an organic, independent thing. You can remember something, KNOW it, and somehow be gaslit into believing the opposite, through the prosyletizing of another or ourselves.

Ever play the game two truths and a lie? Imagine then; its your turn, you’ve given your statements, remembered what you said perfectly, but not which thing didn’t happen. You know one of them is false. But they all feel real now.

Think that’ll fuck you up a bit?

I’m Dan Kwyk and I was with my girlfriend when it happened.

Kelsey and I had been together for years. She was the adventurous one and I was laid back but down for anything. It was a good mix. She kept the things exciting and I was a source of mellow stability. We’d both had previous partners that matched our energy; Kelsey would get burnt out whereas I’d get antsy and frustrated. When we found each other, our friends said the relationship didn’t make sense. Fast forward a year and they said we completed each other. Our family integration was seamless. Everyone got along.

It was about as perfect as you could expect in a real life, messy way. No argument got too heated, the passion ebbed and flowed but never too much, and we had autonomy without the need for secrets. We even got a house together; one floor ranch with an attached garage though there was no door connecting the house to it.

Yet, there was.

So we were on the couch, pizza remains scattered across the box on the table, dogs snoring away on the floor, while teasing and torturing each other through round after round of video games. Kelsey was a bit tipsy and I was a little stoned. No plans to go out, tentative ideas to watch a movie later, a couple shows to check out, and music playing low through the house. She called it Saturday Vibes. The afternoon sun was beyond slapping our faces through the picture window at the front so the blinds were open, letting in the natural light. Our focus was on the television against the wall shared with the garage.

I won’t go through the whole day. We were exhausted from a stressful week and were comfortable with long silences. Kelsey got up to refill her Long Island Iced Tea.

“Want anything?”

“Trail mix.”

She winked. I grabbed the near empty snack bag of chips off the coffee table and tipped it back to get the dregs. From the corner of my eye she was walking towards the kitchen as the bag went up and cut off line of sight.

Click

I heard a door opening. Instead of the front door behind me, the sound emanated from in front of me. There was no door there. When I lowered the bag, there was an open door next to the television as a wisp of hair vanished around the corner to the kitchen. I frowned. Opened my mouth. Coughed on the dry bits. Saw a face in the deep shadow beyond the door that had never existed. It slammed closed before I could clear my throat.

I banged my knee on the table, tripped over it, faceplanted on the carpet and scared the shit out of the dogs as I scrambled to the impossible door and threw it open.

“Babe!”

It was dark. It would open to the garage, it’s door was closed, light off. Light switches at the front and back. Nothing in the middle. Hanging light above the car. Yet no light spilled from the living room. Leaving it open, I grabbed the garage door opener and hit the button. It rumbled open. The light should have turned on with more from the midday sun yet beyond the open mystery door remained dark.

“Babe,” a voice whispered called from the dark. Kelsey’s voice. It was her but sounded muted like she was calling through a thick fog. “Why’d you open the garage?”

I took tentative steps towards the dark doorway. “Uh. Why are you IN the garage?”

Kelsey scoff laughed like she was annoyed. “Im not, Im just grabbing a drink.”

Footsteps approached. The slap and velcro-rip release of bare feet on tile. A few normal steps then the rapid slap-rip-slap-rip of a sprint. I yelped and threw the door shut hard. It made the wall shake.

“What the fuck?” Kelsey said behind me.

I whirled to find her emerging from the kitchen, long island iced tea in one hand and trail mix in the other.

“Back at you,” I said, cause nothing else came to mind.

“What?” She giggled, moved past me and dropped on the couch.

I looked between the door and her. “What the fuck is this?”

She frowned.

“The door.”

Kelsey shrugged. “It’s a door.”

“There never used to be a door here.”

“Babe. It’s a door. It’s always been there.”

“It definitely has NOT always been here.”

“What are you saying?” I opened my mouth but she cut in “Say it without sounding super fucking high.”

I couldn’t say two words without laughing. Which made her laugh. Which pissed me off because I didn’t WANT to laugh. “Im pretty baked but Im not forget a whole ass door exists high.”

“What do you want me to say?” Her tone had lost any amusement. The smirk said she was almost done humoring me. “Honestly, what do you want me to say? That the door was never there before? How insane does that sound?”

It was the restrained mania in her voice that gave me pause. The fear. She needed it to be true, but I couldn’t tell if it was because she needed to deny that the door had appeared from nothing or she was worried that I was losing my mind. What I needed was some kind of acknowledgement.

Seeing I wasn’t going to get anywhere at that moment, I let it drop. The good vibes were gone so we switched to doing our own thing, which mostly meant sticking to our phones. I put in earbus, put on some music, and scrolled through old pictures. Took a while to get to ones from when we moved in.

The door was there. Not just there. It looked exactly the same; elaborately carved wood, a deep gold color that better matched the original white-faded-to-grey wall paint. We’d changed it to a light blue. It fit the new color better, but didn’t match.

When we’d decided to redecorate, Kelsey had planned it out. I’d have lived with the drab rundown colors forever, she never would. This didn’t feel like her. She wouldn’t have made that choice.

“What are you doing?” She asked, though her voice was clipped and short. Irritated. Not looking for a fight but ready to leap into one.

I swiped to the side and showed he ar picture of when we moved in, both of us smiling in the kitchen and cooking our first meal; homemade pizzas.

Her shoulders relaxed. “That was a good day.”

“It was.”

“Now I want pizza.”

“Then let’s do pizza.”

Feigning laziness, I ordered delivery. But I was too antsy. My leg bounced. I patted my pants and swore. “Fuck. I left my wallet in the car.”

Kelsey nodded, unsuspecting, as I hurried out the front door. My long shirt hid the outline of the wallet in my back pocket.

The garage door was open from when I’d hit the button. After hitting the switch, the light in the garage flickered on. Not unusual but ominous given my intent. I slid along the side of the car white car in need of a wash, jostling loose tools and shit we stacked against the walls. Stopped when I faced the wall shared with the living room. I could hear the muffled sound of the television.

There was no door.

“I fucking knew it.”

It didn’t make me feel better. I checked the pictures on my phone again. The door was there. Sweat rolled down my head despite the chill in the air. My heart hammered against my ribs. I ran shaky hands along the wall, checking for a seam and finding flat drywall. I stood where the door would be and hammered my fist against the wall.

“What?” Kelsey shouted.

“Can you come in here?”

A moment later she came through the front door and rounded the corner of the garage. “Whats up?”

I pointed at the wall. She looked between it and me, blank eyed. “Where’s the door?” I asked.

“Are you seriously still on this?”

“Babe. Where’s the door?”

Rolling her eyes, Kelsey turned to walk away.

“Why didn’t you use it to come in here?” She paused. I saw my opening and pushed. “I pounded on the wall and asked you to come to the garage. Why didn’t you use the door to come in here?”

She was half past the corner so I could only see the back half of her head, long dark hair teased by a gentle breeze. Kelsey shuddered and went still as stone. She muttered “Because it doesn’t go to the garage” and went inside.

I stayed there, stunned.

When I went back in, we argued. What did she mean? What did I mean? As if it were obvious. She told me I was being ridiculous, that of course it connected to the garage but it didn’t go there. She cried as she said it. It terrified me because she was unaware of the tears, her smile crooked and manic. I knew when that happened I should have let it go. Found a different approach. Hell, maybe just moved to a different house. It was just a door, but it wasn’t just a door. It had always been there, yet had never been.

The sisyphean nature of the argument led to her throwing her hands up and screaming before she raked clawed fingers down her neck till the grooves bled. I was shocked into frozen silence.

“FINE!” Kelsey shrieked. “I’LL PROVE IT!”

She flung herself at the door. I managed to reach out but the words begging her not to, to stay here, couldn’t get past the anger-sick bile lodged in my throat. The door swung open. Beyond was obsidian save for a single light in the distance. A bulb dangling from a wire. She whirled on me, ferocious. “See? Its the garage LIGHT!”

The new shock dislodged the bile into a wet belch, flooding my mouth with acid. I swallowed it. “It’s so far away though,” I whispered.

It was. The garage was single car sized. The light was a hundred feet from the open door.

Her face went beat red, baring her teeth at me, eyes wide and wild and pleading.

I couldn’t stop myself. “And the light is above the car so why can’t we see it?”

Kelsey’s body shook with fury, blood oozing down over her neck and shirt. All at once the tremors stopped and her shoulders slumped in resignation.

“Fine,” she whispered. “I’ll prove it.”

Kelsey bolted into the dark.

“NO!” I hurried to the doorway but didn’t enter.

The sound of her slapping feet echoed back to me, growing distant. I could see her silhouette against the glow of the light, shrinking as she drew further away. Smaller and smaller. When she reached the light, it loomed high above her. The bulb looked larger than her and had to be dozens of feet above. My mind conjured images of a colossal angler fish

Kelsey stopped beneath it. Turned toward me. Looked up at the light. She shouted “I can hear you Dan!”

I hadn’t said anything.

She turned away from the door and disappeared beyondthe light.

It took a few minutes for me to snap out of it enough to call to her. A few more to escalate into screams.

Kelsey’s family blamed me for her disappearance. Fair. I told the cops everything I knew. It became easier to just say “We had a big fight. She entered the garage through that door. That was the last I saw of her.” Easier than going into more detail. They filled in the blanks on their own. Forensic teams scoured the garage. I was interrogated. Arrested. Polygraphed. The whole nine. In the end they didn’t have enough to arrest me.

Six months after she’d disappeared, her brother Kevin was the first to show up on my doorstep, drunk and ready to beat the truth out of me. I asked him a simple question.

“Want to play two truths and a lie?”

He was confused. So I pressed on.

“I’ll go first. That door was never there. That door was always there. I’m responsible for Kelsey vanishing.”

He thought I was trying to joke around. Kev hit me enough I thought he was gonna kill me. Left me in a bloody heap. I got fixed up. Never pressed charges or even said he’d been responsible. Took a couple more months for him to show up at my door again. Wanted to know why I never turned him in.

I gestured to The Door That Shouldn’t Be. “You ever seen this door before?”

He frowned. Opened his mouth. Blinked. “Yes.” Said without confidence.

When his back was turned I knocked him out with a blackjack. You can get one online. Tied his arms behind him. Used a hundred foot rope tied to him as a lead. Set a chair facing the door. When he woke I said he was going to help me find Kelsey. I pointed a gun at him. To his credit he didn’t plead. The possibility of finding her outweighed the fear of the weapon.

He stumbled into the dark. When he reached the light he stopped. Looked around. His voice carried in echoes to me. “Kelse? I hear you. Where are you?” Whatever he heard never reached me.

I was braced in the doorway, gripping the rope, but couldn’t stop him from pulling free. He shambled into the dark. The rope slithered snakelike behind him, faster and faster till it whipped beyond the light, faster than anyone could run.

It cost a bit but I installed a mechanical winch with several hundred feet of chain. Mounted it to the floor facing The Door. I felt like the shark fisherman from Jaws. Even had binoculars.

Her parents showed up a year later wanting answer. I played the same game.

“The door was never there. The door was always there. I’m responsible for Kelsey’s disappearance.”

They reacted the same as their son. Her dad went down quick but her mom, Viv, she was a bobcat. Clawed and bit and kicked. I lost teeth knocking her out. Used some bondage vests from a sex shop to lock their arms back. When they woke, I gave them the same spiel as Kevin. Knowing both their kids had vanished beyond, they were fearless but refused to go unless it was together. So I bound them to the same hook and several hundred feet of chain attached to the winch.

At the light they pulled in opposite directions, calling their children’s names. Viv pulled her husband into the dark. Once more the line was pulled out, faster and faster. At two hundred I hit the lock. The line pulled taught. Hummed. Creaked.

The end of it angled up. And up. And up.

The lack of sound scared me the most. Just dead silence. Not even echoes.

The chain broke.

I stared into the dark, shocked and disheartened.

Then I saw Kelsey.

Her face entered the light. Just her head, long hair ending several feet above the ground. Taller than she had been. Through the binoculars, I could see the smile, eyes shadowed with a cold light deep in their pits. Her lips moved but the voice whispered close, from just beyond the door.

“It’s always been there. It leads to the garage. It’s safe.”

The words were slurred like she was half asleep.

“Come with me.”

That last line sounded like something pretending to be her.

I asked for Kelsey to be returned to me. Begged. Pleaded. Threatened. It didn’t react or say anything else. The head returned to the dark.

Why am I telling you? Haven’t you guessed? I’d think the chain tying your arms together would make it obvious. Not my fault you decided to break into this house. Bad for you. Fortuitous for me.

Each time I send someone now, she reappears. Parts of her, anyway. We play two truths and a lie. Its not the best method to get information but what can you do? You don’t argue with things like this. You just…do.

Don’t cry. Dont’ beg. Don’t plead. I won’t taze you again.

I’ll shoot you.

You’re going in there because that door doesn’t exist. Has always existed. And her disappearance is my fault. But I can figure it out. I can get her back. As long as its a door, it can be closed. As long as it can open,she can come back. And when is a door not a door?

click

Now get the fuck in there.